"Sledgehammer Coup Plan": Responsible Prosecutors Replaced

The number of people arrested in the latest operations related to the "Sledgehammer Coup Plan" carried out yesterday (6 April) amounts to 86, among them 70 active military officers. The operations were carried out in the Turkish major cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir and in Çanakkale south of the Dardanelles.

20 different places were searched in Istanbul, Izmır and Çanakkale. Senior Rear Admiral Tuncay Çakan from the Istanbul Gülhane Military Medical Academy (GATA), and Aegean Army Command retired General Şükrü Saıışık, former Secretary General of the National Security Council (MGK), were among the arrested people.

Retired Brigadier General Mustafa Kemal Tutkun was arrested in Çanakkale and taken to Istanbul. Tutkun's home was searched. The retired Brigadier General is a history lecturer at the 18 March University of Çanakkale.

Two prosecutors deposed from office

When it turned out that arrest decisions had been issued for a total of 95 people in 14 different provinces, Istanbul Public Chief Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin immediately stopped the operations in the referring 14 provinces. Prosecutors Mehmet Berk and Bilal Bayraktar were withdrawn from the investigation. Their places were taken by Murat Yönder and Mehmet Ergül.

Chief Prosecutor Engin had given a directive on 26 February saying that arrests and operations could only be decided with the approval of a representative of the Chief Prosecutor. Allegedly, the latest operations lacked such an approval, which was the reason for the deposition of the two prosecutors from office. Engin said that the operations were currently paused to give the two new prosecutors the possibility to familiarize themselves with the file.

In the scope of the same investigation, the Istanbul 12^th High Criminal Court had issued the arrest decision on 21 people on 4 April, among them Major General İzzet Ocak and retired Colonel Kulibay Aktaş.

"Sledgehammer" ('Balyoz') is the name for a coup plotted by the armed forces. Apparently, a group of people mapped out a 5,000 pages strong plan from the end of 2002 till March 2003 called the "Sledgehammer Operation Plan". It was aimed at creating disorder in the country by bombings of mosques, crashing a Turkish je121313, t plane and warplanes flying over the parliament, which should eventually lead to martial law and a coup.(EÖ/VK)